Just look at animemes banning the use of tr*p. Of course not every anime is misogynist but... there’s kinda a lot. And I think there’s a lot of blatant misogyny that is definitely noticed, and people who watch those scenes know it’s bad, but if you keep watching that shit over and over, even if you know it’s bad, it just get burned into your brain. But more importantly, a lot of anime just treats women as a whole differently than the male characters. Their drawn slightly differently, they act slightly differently, and they continue to be treated as objects, albeit in more subtle ways. On their own or in a bubble these grievances wouldn’t be a big deal, but it does add up. Idk, shit just sucks and it makes it hard to get into shows I would really like otherwise...
Alright OP, we need some HISTORICAL MATERIALISM up in here in order to discover exactly why anime, as a niche nerd culture, has inculcated such reactionary viewpoints. Maybe along the way we can discover why this breed of reactionary keeps recurring in other niche nerd communities like Star Wars and comic books, etc and maybe together we can think about some way to combat this. Or not. I'm not your mom. Also if you're expecting citations I'm drunk AF right now so you're on your own fam. Hell I could be talking out my ass for all you know, so don't just trust the word of some weirdo on the internet in some weirdo internet forum and do your own reading.
K so in the before times, anime as a medium isn't exactly the horny pre-pubescent power fantasy realm you know now. We start with Astroboy in the 50's, which was a local comic book creator figuring out a way to industrialize and mass-produce for-TV animation on a budget 1/10 of his competitors at Disney (which basically involved a lot of cost cutting, but also severely mistreating labour. We can get into that another time.) Animation in Japan is seen exactly the same as it is everywhere else in the world- whimsical entertainment for children. No pantyshots, no jiggle physics, just a cute robot boy saving the world cos a dad built a robot to replace his dead son. Astroboy makes money and more or less the modern anime industry as we know it is born. You get World Masterpiece Theatre, which gives you Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki, and God saw that it was good.
Fast forward to the 70's, and anime has been puttering along as children's entertainment. Magical girl, Super robot, Super Sentai, Ashita no Joe.... anyway, stuff for kids. Then STAR WARS. Pop culture is upended. Now everything has to be mature and cool and scifi and sexy. READY FOR SOME PTSD? Mobile Suit Gundam coming in hot with that shit. All the kids who grew up watching Astroboy all want to make the next Star Wars but they have no film infrastructure that rivals Hollywood so they end up becoming animators, and since they were the children of the people who survived the atom bomb it's all BASH THE SPACE FASH all the time. (Coincidentally, corresponding with the rise of the New Left in Japan.) But now anime is no longer for kids, but for real thinking adults who comprehend the moral complexity of war and understand the dangers of fascism and please buy our model kits.
It's the 80's, and Japan is going to take over the world. The Asian Economic Miracle (spoilers, it wasn't) has Japan flush with cash and on the cutting edge of technology. Neoliberalism works, and it's harbinger is Sony. Thanks to localisation efforts, anime has found a niche elsewhere in the world as the Big Boy Animation for Big Thonking Boys, and VHS rental places everywhere like Blockbuster are scrambling to stock their shelves. What's a Blockbuster? Think Netflix but in real life. Anyway, the World is hungry for Japan, and with all this foreign cash studios are willing to give that money to just about anyone. So now animators are pushing the envelope, doing the most edgy and absurd shit you can imagine. Nothing is taboo, nothing is sacred, hide yo children and your wives cause they raping everybody out there. This financial freedom is a land of contrasts. You get Akira, and you get Wicked City. Course, in Japan no self respecting adult citizen of the world would be caught dead watching cartoons, so only basement dwelling weirdos with VHS decks actually buy and watch these movies.
It's the End of
EvangelionHistory, except History ends early for Japan. The Asian Financial Crisis of the 90's plunges Japan into a recession it STILL hasn't recovered from to this day. As the bubbles burst, the animation studios are scrambling to make rent and pay their employees... as is the rest of Japan. Doesn't take a genius to tell you that consumers without jobs can't spend, and they sure as hell aren't going to buy cartoons. Except... some people do still buy cartoons. All those basement dwelling weirdos with VHS decks and gasp computers? They'd rather spend money on their hobbies, cause they saw their peers save and scrimp and toil at their Sarariman day jobs just to lose everything and throw themselves off the 90th floor. Better the Otaku Way of Life- can't plan an expensive future with a house and children which society has basically told you all your life is the definition of success when no such future is possible cause you can't save shit. Can't socialize and function highly enough to build the relationships needed to form a successful mating pair-bond in a dysfunctional society. Better to sleep in the warm glow of the TV screen. To sleep, perchance to dream. And in those dreams that may come, big ol' Anime Tiddies. Enter the Waifu: the ultimate expression of male fantasy; simultaneously submissive and spontaneous, sexy and chaste, rebellious and conservative, impossibly young yet surprisingly mature... a real ideal, but not constrained by reality. Madonna, Whore, Maiden, Mother, Crone. Whatever you want her to be... (Flip the gender for husbandos. Sorry, ladies. Patriarchy oppresses men too.) Because after all, ideals can't let you down the way reality has.So of course, the animation companies do the only sensible thing they can do- they cater exclusively to these people. After all, the bills need to get paid.
Have a cool idea for a show about a gay ice skater? Nah man, can't risk it in this economic climate. What if all those nerds who buy our stuff start flipping their shit? That show about the all male swim team already had nasty comments on 2chan, although we did mysteriously make money from that. It's almost like as if we take the time on some passion projects as a studio we're not adapting the latest pandering bullshit the production committee is trying to get us to do, and those internet assholes who just want to jack off to underage girls in some bizarre attempt to relive their highschool days know it. Fuckers also pay our bills when they buy that $200 half-naked statue. Maybe with this new-fangled internet thingy we can make some dosh on the side selling whatever we have on hand to those baka-gaijin overseas.
Oh shit motherfucker the Twin Towers just crashed. Here, have some K-On!.
Repost this without the Redditisms and fact-check it a bit and it'd be good.
If I were gonna put that much effort in I'd wanna get paid instead. Hell I didn't even proof-read it.
buckle up FUCKNOZLES it's time for a little history lesson
You get Akira, and you get Wicked City. Course, in Japan no self respecting adult citizen of the world would be caught dead watching cartoons, so only basement dwelling weirdos with VHS decks actually buy and watch these movies.
Akira was actually the 6th highest grossing Japanese film of its year in theaters.
STOP "YES AKSHUALLY"ING ME, I'M
SHITPOSTINGMANUFACTURING A NARRATIVE OVAH HEAH!Sigh. What I meant to say is that, by-and-large, animation was/is still looked down upon by the mainstream as a medium for children. I understand the run-on sentence gives the impression I was referring to Akira, but I didn't mean to.
Edit: Wait no I totally did.
Double Edit: Wait OK what I mean is that the majority of the people financially supporting the anime industry by-and-large were enthusiast/nerds/VHS weirdos. Mainstream successes (Studio Ghibli/Ghost in the Shell/Akira/Your Name) and shows catered to children notwithstanding.
I was trying to be ironic with the AnJ thing.
Like I said I'm drunk AF and I'm trying to abbreviate 70+ years of niche animation/cultural history into a giant shitpost so I had to take some liberties... but still consider the difference in female characters from the 80s to the 90s and beyond. Lynn Minmei is arguably a well drawn out character (especially movie vers) in spite of a big part of her character being just that she's pretty, and then you get the cast of say Clannad with it's infantilised moe bullshit. It's a gradual and uneven transition from Lena Inverse to Asuna, but it's there.
I dunno, the post-war arc kinda gave Minmei a lot even as it reduced Hikaru (and Misa, to an extent) into a blithering idiot. But yeah fuck Tomino and his super weird views on sex and gender.
I wouldn't call it 'huge,' given that sexist attitudes are fully extant in every society and anime simply appeals to these rather than makes converts
It's like saying that minstrel shows contributed to racism, they were a byproduct of something that was already well-established
That’s true, I guess I more so mean that they serve to normalize. They’re a byproduct for sure, but of course every byproduct has the chance to be an entry point too.
I'd make the argument that western culture is probably worse.
I mean the Japanese stuff is stylistically pervy and all, but the west seems to actively hate and deride any women who do anything outside of white christian normality. That gets translated into media as well, it's just not visible.
Most forms of fictional media in the west have women who are at the complete whims of their hormones and love interests. It's fucking weird.
That's if they are the main protagonist, otherwise they just get written as like a potted plant side character that does fuck-all except maybe give your male lead a smooch
I'm not saying anime isn't mysoginistic though. It definitely is.
Fair. I didn't mean for a noble savage thing to be happening, but I did say the west was worse so I guess that's what that means.
I don't particularly enjoy anime or really like anything about Japan as a country. I just meant that western media is highly influential and also is full of hatred for women.
I only have like a surface level knowledge of anime so there's probably a bunch of egregious shit I don't know about.
I'm thinking of anime that has been popularized here, basic toonami and adult swim shows.
People talking about anime or westerner obsession with "Japanese culture" always come of as this xkcd comic .
It's just not the niche thing people think it is. Nearly everyone under fourty grew up with some weeb or weeb derived shit at this point.
There’s a lot of people between those two extreme though.
Least in my experience there plenty of people who like anime but don’t really give much of a fuck about Japanese culture beyond maybe also liking sushi or whatever. Honestly I just enjoy it because it’s more open to exploring weird story concepts than a lot of western media, the fact it’s from japan doesn’t mean jack shit to me.
While there aren't many actively good and feminist anime (It's mostly just Utena), anime as a whole isn't particularly worse towards women than western media it's just a lot more immediately horny than other forms of misogyny. And the western fanbase of anime were mostly misogynistic before watching anime, it's not the anime itself that reinforces those beliefs, it's the communities surrounding it. As proven by there being plenty of anime fans who aren't awful who mostly avoid major anime communities.
Anime consumption is pretty ubiquitous at this point. It’s really become in the same vein as video games, a formally niche hobby who’s hardcore fans were viewed as bizarre, but is now popular enough that almost everyone under 30 has moderate exposure to it. It’s not really even a white guy thing anymore, a lot of people seem totally unaware how popular anime is among African Americans, and while not 50/50 female anime fans aren’t exactly rare.
As such I think taking about “unique” effect anime has over other media is, well about as stupid as doing the same for video games. Video games tend to be more violent and anime more openly horny than most media, but yeah I don’t really think you can isolate any affects they have over any other media.
I think you're right that there is a reinforcing/normalizing relationship going on there. Most Anime isn't made with western audiences in mind - a lot of it is made basically as an advertisement for the toys that are marketed to the super fans, who are essentially addicts (see also: alcohol, where 50% of the sales go to 10% of the drinkers). Even if you get into the business with reasonable female characters, there is a massive market pressure to turn them into hyper-sexualized stereotypes because that's what sells plastic figures and body pillow covers, and if you choose to stick to your guns and buck that trend your IP will be drowned out by those that don't.
It's an artistic medium whose mainstream content is primarily driven by the desires of disaffected men - so naturally it reinforces their worst tendencies.
Selling shit to idiots is a more effective business model than most.
Attack on Titan and One Punch Man are two of the most wildly successful anime of the previous decade and imo what has been animated of them (I haven't read the manga) is pretty good on terms of gender equality. It kinda gives me hope that in the future all the dumb sexualizing trends will die out. That said, the classics will always exist, and people are always gonna be watching Evangelion showing nude 14 year olds and wanting more
Titan is great, im so excited for this last season. It def doesnt have as terrible politics compared to a lot of anime/media in general (big exception being i get some weird kind of "bloodline"/nationstate themes tho that kind of remind me of zionism and the like, anyone else?). not quite as problematic as some of the other stuff ive seen here like deathnote, which i enjoyed enough, great premise, but theres obviouslly a lot of issues with women,etc and especially the whole tough on crime aspect.
What about the part where he wacks off on her comatose body?
Um... people... you realise that the director meant that as meta-commentary, right? The first person framing of that sequence being the big tell, right? That it's a direct condemnation of all the waifu bodypillow neckbeards who weren't satisfied with the original TV ending of Evangelion cause they wanted to jack off to Asuka and not be told they needed to self-actualise, right?
Like we can have a discussion about how the commercialization of art undercuts the messages it tells us, but can we at least be clear on the directorial intention...
Yup, Eva is probably one of the most clear examples of this commodification undercutting messages with the figurines of the female characters being super sexualized while the show tries to steer young men away from oversexualizing women.
It's ok, Anno will let us know how he REALLY feels in Rebuild 3.0 + 1.0, You Can (Not) Fap.
Eeeeeeeehhhh... at this point they feel like his personal anti-Otaku vehicle, where he's just screaming "WHY DON'T YOU GET IT!!!" at the top of his lungs as he bashes you over the head with End of Evangelion.
Like... I've never seen any author so visibly frustrated at cockblocking himself, so they're worth the watch for that at least, I guess.
Yeah, I do realize that, I just thought it was funny that his objection was to a scene besides that one. Also, look at how many fans miss that (definitely intended) meta commentary. Turns out there is no such thing as an anti-anime film.
Dang, done it by my inability to discern sarcasm in text form.
If Anno did the principled Bill Waterson thing and somehow blocked all merchandising (which I'm not sure even he could pull off as I don't know how much he had a say in production and financing) maybe it could've worked, but the Evangelion toothbrushes certainly don't help.
I recently started watching anime and I haven’t really found one yet that has good female characters (although I really haven’t watched many yet).
The ones that don’t sexualize the characters like FMA and Deathnote still don’t give the women a lot of agency and they’re always serving the men.
Code Geass had at least one female character I liked but sexualized her and the others a lot.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a satire of magical girl anime so it does trod in some of the tropes, but by the end I think the female characters have agency and real relationships with each other. But it still ultimately feels like men writing women.
I think Erased was also okay about this. It was a male-centered story but there were significant female characters and I don’t remember any of them being sexualized. Not sure if it passes the Bechedel test though.
Overlord was the worst one for me that I’ve seen and I couldn’t finish it.
The ones that don’t sexualize the characters like FMA and Deathnote still don’t give the women a lot of agency and they’re always serving the men.
Death Note is one of the worst anime out there when it comes to the representation of women imo. The main antagonist/protagonist constantly remarks on how easily fooled and overly emotional women are. And the show does it's darndest to try and prove him right, even the female god of death gets done in because of it. The sexism gets a lot more obvious when it comes to their follow up work, Bakuman, though. Death Note just keeps getting worse whenever I return to it.
Ugh, I love the conflict between Light and L, but I can't stand Misa's terrible characterization (or lack thereof, I should say). Her entire role in the story is to be Light's goth slave gf and give him access to a second death note. I wasn't even radicalized when I first watched it and it bothered me even back then.
I think Erased was also okay about this. It was a male-centered story but there were significant female characters and I don’t remember any of them being sexualized.
Eh his teenager coworkers boobs are sometimes a bit... center of frame
Not sure if it passes the Bechedel test though.
Pretty sure his mom has convos with other women about shit unrelated to any males in the plot, least not directly. Granted their all short.
Have you ever tried Twelve Kingdoms? It's a little old now I guess, but so good. The protagonist is a high school girl and the the whole first season's focus is her character arc and her struggle with the pressures of society. While being sent to a magical world, fighting monsters, and hanging out with a talking mouse scholar ofc. The second season adds two more female protagonists. It's very introspective and character focused for a portal fantasy lol. The light novels it's based on were written by a woman, which helps.
I haven’t seen that one yet but I’ll have to check it out.
I found when I was trying to find an anime with a female protagonist that usually they were even worse so I kind of gave up.
Check out series that are tagged with Josei or Shoujo for shows that are more geared towards women/written by women.
Also, I'll throw in a rec for Usagi Drop - Adorable show that explores the challenges of being a mother in modern society. I'd argue this one (and its controversial source material) is actually feminist in nature in that the women in the series are allowed to make choices that go against societal expectations of them.
Try Masaaki Yuasa - the best animation (not just "anime") director hands down with an absolutely unique vision every single time. He has plenty of interesting and well written female characters. In fact in many of his works it's the male characters who are often the immature idiots instead. The late Satoshi Kon a close second. Makoto Shinkai and Mamoru Hosoda as well.
Serial Experiments Lane also features a female protagonist who explores her own psyche as she descends into madness.
Huh. I had it recommenced to me, watched one episode, but got annoyed by that girl character that speaks exclusively in baby talk. Maybe I should give it another try.
I have watched many anime with great female characters, but like western media, there is likely to be something that could be improved to portray the women better. Still, I think I can recommend something worth watching if there's a genre or specific kind of show/movie you want to watch?
I did like most of the anime I watched, just sometimes need to take breaks from male-focused media.
My favorites of the things I watched were FMA (both original and Brotherhood) and Code Geass.
I think Kill La Kill is alright, and Gurren Lagann, they both kinda flip the script with the most badass characters being women. That's about all the Anime I've watched outside of Miazaki and Akira.
Gurenn Lagann is fun but I think it reflects some of Gainax's worst tendencies, with the two major female characters being the thirteen-year-old fap bait (who spends the entire series in a bikini top or less) and the useless waif.
KLK is good though, essentially Studio Trigger broke off from Gainax and set about righting the wrongs of the past by making two shows, one where the characters are cute girls and there's nothing sexual at all (Little Witch Academia) and one where the characters are sexy girls but the sexualization is turned so far up off the charts that it becomes something else entirely (Kill La Kill).
Totally agree, I like GL for its super solid communist revolution story that even deals with the issues of revisionism in the second half, but they definitely could have turned the horniness down. I think the second half does alright in trying to reconcile those character tropes, with the waif becoming the main villain and the fap trap becoming a school teacher. At least until she decides "time to rip off all my clothes in front of a bunch of 7 year olds".
Yeah, but it turns out that the main girl is just clothes so she embraces the horny and kills the 2d umbrella lady or something. I never really watched it and thought "oh I'm supposed to be horny", always just got the vibe that it was going so over the top with it as a joke, to the point that the main plot of the show is that clothes give you super powers.
The only time I got horny was during the proletarian revolution episode. When the main family became bourgeoisie for a minute, then destroyed the whole system so they could be with their comrades.
That's interesting. I had a friend who watched KLK and she said that she had to stop because the women (and teens I guess?) were super over sexualized in a way that made her uncomfortable.
KLK is a big parody of a lot of anime. On an initial watch the fan service is so much its uncomfortable, but the overall story is one of abuse and abandonment.
I remember the first time I watched I was like "this is just too damn horny" and its hard to draw the line between making fun of the horniness and playing into the fan service.
Anime is literally just animation that comes from Japan. And as with animation from the US, Russia, France, China, etc. over 90% of it is going to be crap, but that's also the case for any artistic endeavours be it films, music, literature, painting, theatre, etc. So the only misogyny you will find is the one already imbedded into modern culture in general and the culture of the country of origin in particular. And people who hold backwards views will latch onto anything.
